Islam in European Thought

This collection of essays focuses on the relations between European and Islamic thought and culture from the late 18th to the 20th century. The long first essay is concerned with the development of ideas about Islam in European thought and scholarship, showing in particular how the views of 19th-century thinkers and scholars reflected the dominant philosophical and historical ideas of their age. Subsequent chapters are devoted to individual writers who played an important part in forming and communicating an image of Islamic history and civilization: Louis Massignon, H.A.R. Gibb, Marshall Hodgson and Jacques Berque, together with the scholar-soldier T.E. Lawrence. The final three essays look at the subject from the other side, and deal with some of the reactions of the Islamic world to the powerful new ideas of European civilization, including the first Arabic encyclopaedia and the first translation of Homer.